Dusseldorf Exactly 400 years after it was founded, Heinz-Glas is anything but a celebration. The Franconian-Thuringian glass manufacturer is struggling with enormous energy costs. In 2019, expenditure on electricity and gas was eleven million euros, this year it will be 32 million euros. “It’s the biggest crisis in our company’s history,” says owner Carletta Heinz. “But we glassmakers are a tough bunch – we will hold out this time too.”
Heinz-Glas is the world market leader in the production and finishing of perfume bottles. The family business supplies cosmetics giants such as L’Oréal and Estée Lauder, and produces fragrance bottles for brands such as Hugo Boss and Calvin Klein. Heinz-Glas produces two billion flacons per year, every third perfume bottle in the trade comes from the traditional company.
The family business is used to crises – right from the start: It was founded in the middle of the Thirty Years’ War. It survived both world wars and the oil crisis of the 1970s. Carletta Heinz is now the 13th generation to run the company and its 4,000 employees worldwide. She took over the reins in 2020 amid the pandemic. Now it has to get the problems of the energy crisis under control.
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The company was already struggling with high energy costs at the end of the 19th century. Wood, which served as an energy source at the time, became scarce and expensive. The company switched to coal and was rescued in the process by government aid. The government financially supported the construction of the railway so that the coal could be transported.
The glass company has been in family hands for 13 generations.
(Photo: Heinz-Glas)
History repeats itself – only that Heinz-Glas now needs a lot of gas and electricity instead of wood and the government wants to counteract this with energy price brakes. From the point of view of owner Heinz, these are urgently needed: “If there is no electricity and gas price brake, we will have to stop our production in Germany and relocate it to other countries.”
With the high energy prices, it is not possible to produce competitively in this country. Heinz wants to keep the 1700 jobs in Germany.
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As then, the crisis is increasing the pressure to switch energy sources. At the Thuringia site, Heinz-Glas wants to use electricity for production faster than planned anyway, in order to become less dependent on gas. From 2025, the company wants to completely dispense with fossil fuels by relying on green electricity and green hydrogen.
Three glass companies among the ten oldest family businesses
The flacon producer is the tenth oldest family business in Germany, according to a list from the Family Business Foundation. It is striking that three companies from the industry can be found among the top ten: Freiherr-von-Poschinger-Glasmanufaktur, Wiegand-Glas and Heinz-Glas. The reason for this is that the barriers to entry are high, for example, building a glassworks today costs tens of millions of euros.
The Wiegand-Glas company, founded in 1570, is only a few kilometers away from the Heinz-Glas headquarters in Kleintettau, Franconia. Wiegand has focused on a different industry, producing more than eight million glass containers for the beverage and food industry every day.
In addition to Heinz-Glas and Wiegand, other glass companies have settled in the densely forested province in the Bavarian-Thuringian border region because wood was used for glass melting in the early days.
Should there be a gas supply stop today, it would hit the region particularly hard: In the small community of Tettau, 5,000 employees work for glass companies who are threatened with short-time work. This would also have consequences for 4,000 other workers from downstream operations or local shops.
Heinz-Glas has already made provisions for this eventuality. A tank for propane gas was built at the Bavarian site. A tanker truck would have to deliver the gas every day to keep the plant running.
Focus on cosmetics industry
In 1622, Hanß Heintz opened the company’s first factory in Piesau, Thuringia. At this point, members of the family had been glassmakers for almost 100 years. In 1661 the plant was built in Kleintettau. Both locations still exist today.
The photo was taken around 1900.
(Photo: Heinz-Glas)
At that time the range was larger, the family business produced glasses for medicine or spirits, for example. Up until the 1990s, Heinz-Glas produced bottles for the spirits manufacturer Underberg. At the turn of the millennium, the company focused on the growing perfume and cosmetics market.
One of the major corporate crises was a fire in 1904. The glassworks in Kleintettau, Bavaria, which was almost 250 years old at the time, was intentionally set alight. The owners were not deterred by this, they built a new and more modern production facility at the lower end of the village.
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During the two world wars, the company made a virtue out of necessity: production was switched to cans for shoe polish, for example, which the soldiers needed to care for their boots. Although the company used forced labor during the Second World War, the workforce was scarce due to the war.
This gave rise to the idea for the first fully automated machine for glass production in 1943. “We have not been deterred over the years and have always looked for solutions because we believe in our product,” says owner Carletta Heinz.
In divided Germany, the Heinz-Glas locations were also separate
When Germany was divided, Heinz-Glas was also divided. The two locations were not far apart, but they were in two different countries. The operation in Thuringia was nationalized, after reunification Heinz-Glas bought back the East German location and modernized it.
In the west, Heinz-Glas was the first glass company in Germany to start plastic production in 1955, because many manufacturers switched to plastic packaging at the time. Today, this business is declining again, accounting for less than ten percent of sales, because branded companies want to avoid plastic.
Growth spurt through internationalization
The company received a growth spurt from Carl-August Heinz, the father of the current owner. With 330 million euros, sales are now 13 times as high as before he joined the company. He started out in management in 1977, and the 72-year-old is now a member of the advisory board. He drove internationalization forward, expanding to Belgium, Poland, the Czech Republic, America, South America and India.
Important milestones of the Heinz-Glas company
Carletta Heinz wants to continue on this course. This year, for example, the company opened a glass production and finishing plant in China. The demand for high-quality creams and perfumes is particularly high there. France and the USA are still the most important markets for Heinz-Glas, the company achieves 80 percent of its sales abroad.
Heinz-Glas has a turnover of 330 million euros.
(Photo: Heinz-Glas)
The current owner has been with the company since the end of 2013. She established the topic of sustainability as a strategic goal and professionalized the structures: she introduced regular meetings and aligned goals with key figures. “Because of the rapid growth, Heinz-Glas was still run as a craft business.”
“Don’t confuse tradition with old-fashioned”
Main shareholder Heinz runs the business with three external managing directors. Heinz-Glas should remain a family business in the future. “We can think long-term and it’s easier than a public company to survive dry spells,” she says. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that her one-year-old son will have to run the company in the future if he doesn’t want to. Good external management is also conceivable.
The oldest family companies in Germany
Carletta Heinz is proud that she is one of the oldest family entrepreneurs in Germany. But she also says: “We have to be careful that tradition is not confused with old-fashioned.” It is important that her company remains innovative even after 400 years.
If the state energy aid arrives at Heinz-Glas, the owner looks optimistically to the future. “When the economic situation worsens, many people still want to treat themselves to at least one little luxury like perfume,” says Heinz. Maybe a reason to celebrate the company’s 400th anniversary.
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